Mommies and Daddies
by Fallen Ark Angel
Summary: Somethings should stay in the past. And others should be brought out into the light as often as possible. - One-shot, set in Last Month universe.


It all happened because Mirajane had taken recently to talking about her parents.

Laxus wasn't sure had had spawned it on, but thought nothing of it, really. Lana, their daughter, was about three and was getting old enough to be curious about such things. Maybe. She knew, at least, that everyone had a mommy and daddy (which he knew given that, lately, she'd been pairing off her stuffed animals in such ways and giving the smaller stuffed animals to be the babies of the others; her logic wasn't ideal, as there were quite a few dogs who were mothers or fathers to kittens or even one toy mouse who appeared to be the offspring of a bunny rabbit and her stuffed dragon, but she was trying) and that, clearly, at some point, both Laxus and Mirajane must have had one too.

As he was frequently out on jobs (well, he felt it was frequent; Mira actually suggested many times that he loafed around the house far more often than he thought, but he just wanted to be around his baby, that was all), he probably missed the start of the entire thing. He faintly remembered returning home and Mirajane telling him through the usually giggles about all that she and their daughter had done while he was off. The subject came up, he was nearly certain, about how during her bath one night, when Lana was actually being a good girl and not screaming bloody murder about having to take one, the little girl got to asking when her daddy would be home and, somehow, managed to also ask when Mira's would be home.

Or something like that. Laxus wasn't too sure.

Maybe Lana had been telling Mira about her daddy (him, obviously) and how awesome he was (because, duh, he just was, of course she would notice that; awesome recognizes awesome) and asked if Mira had just as awesome of daddy.

Laxus liked that explanation the best.

Still, the most likely answer was that Lana hadn't really asked. Moreover, Mira had probably misunderstood the question. The little girl, while learning the concept of family and parents, still got rather befuddled on it at times (refer to the above in which a rabbit and a dragon could pop out a baby mouse), which left the idea of her not only putting together such a sentence, but also reasoning that Mira's 'daddy' was absent, while possible, seemingly rather abstract.

Now, Laxus thought the world of his little hatchling. Honest. Best baby dragon/demon to ever exist. The only.

But… It just seemed more like a Mirajane manipulation.

Again, there was no problem with that. Mira didn't talk much about her life before the guild with him and that was fine too. But if she wanted their daughter to know about it, great. Lana was part of the Dreyar Dynasty, sure (which was sadly kinda small and, considering he didn't plan on having any more children, would die with her, but whatever), but she was a Strauss too. Sorta. So she should know about their past and stuff. He wasn't sure where he believed people went when they died, but he liked to think that both his mother and Mirajane's parents were, at the very least, interested in their daughter, wherever they were.

Lana started telling him, anyhow, of all the things that Mira told her about her maternal grandparents. In very clipped ways, of course, as she wasn't so great at story telling. He heard all about how big Mommy's daddy had been and how he would work all day and sweat and get all nasty and he would kiss Mommy and Aunt Lissy on the cheeks before bed, just like _her_ daddy and wasn't that so silly?

Laxus, who enjoyed any and all time gift to him with his daughter, would smile at such things and nod his head, even when he could tell Lana either hadn't understood the story that Mira told her or was out right fibbing (she told him once that Mommy's mommy would make them eat rocks for dinner and when he repeated the word, rocks, Lana got annoyed and insisted, yes, rocks). It came with the territory, he was nearly certain, of having a child. You listened to gibberish because you loved them.

You know, until their gibberish turned more into hounding you for _your_ stories so that they could no doubt mangle them in retellings to others.

Then it got a tad annoying.

He almost misunderstood Lana's original question as it was one of those days where he was laid out on her bedroom floor, mostly listening to her babble as she ran color crayons all over a page in her coloring book. She was just telling him about how Mommy's daddy was her grandpa, which was completely blowing the little girl's mind.

"Daddy?" she asked at one point, glancing over at the man. He was just watching her with a slight smile and nodded when she spoke to him. "Gramps is your daddy?"

And there it was. Somewhere along explaining what mommies and daddies and grandpas and grandmas were, Mira had sparked something inside the girl. Curiosity. It kills dragons, Laxus had heard.

"No," Laxus told her slowly. "He's my Gramps. Which makes him your great-grandpa."

Lana continued to stare. "Gramps no your daddy?"

"Gramps is not my daddy. Not, Lana. The word isn't no. It's not. And he isn't, by the way. My father. Have you...thought that? This whole time?"

Meh. Lana really didn't...think about those sorts of things. Laxus was Daddy because he said he was Daddy. Gramps was Gramps because he said he was Gramps. Aunt Ever was Aunt Ever because she said she was Aunt Ever. There had been no reasoning on her part outside of those given facts. Someone was only whoever they claimed to be.

And even though Laxus had seen her grouping her stuffed animals into families as a basic concept, in her mind it was truly little more than her doing what they had all done to her. She said that the bunny was the mommy and the dragon was the daddy and the mouse was the baby.

Therefore, it was.

Mirajane, however, by filling her head with ideas of a grandfather and grandmother she had never known, had spawned a concept unknown to the little girl. Around her, the others were typically referred to in the titles she knew them by. If Mirajane wanted her to go sit with Laxus, she'd tell her to go sit with Daddy. If she was out with Bickslow and he was asking if she and Lisanna wanted to go to the park, he'd refer to his girlfriend as Aunt Lisanna. Everyone called Gramps by that name around her. Gramps. Other than Mommy. She called him Master, but Lana typically didn't understand who she was talking about when she'd say that, so even she'd taken to calling him Gramps around the little girl.

Now though that Mirajane had taught Lana that, while she called her own parents Papa and Mama, that to Lana they would be Grandpa and Grandma, she was starting to realize that, maybe, people did have different relations to one another. It was about then that she started to understand that Uncle Elf wasn't just there because he was her uncle. He was her uncle because he was Mommy's brother. And Aunt Lissy was Mommy's sister.

It was a rather daunting concept to the child, but slowly, she was coming to terms with it. And, in the days before she first questioned Laxus about Makarov, Mirajane had taken to explaining to her that, just like her Papa was Lana's Grandpa, Gramps was also her grandfather.

Which was just groundbreaking. Lana had never considered that Gramps wasn't just a name, but rather meant the word grandpa. At all. And, at three, she still didn't fully get it.

Hence her questioning Laxus.

"Gramps is Daddy's daddy?" She phrased it that way, after Laxus' question, still wanting him to answer the question as yes. She did this sometimes. If Laxus told her that no, she couldn't have a cookie, then she'd just try to rephrase the question in another way, as if there had been a language barrier or something. "Yes?"

"No, silly," he said as she dropped her color crayons and just stared at him. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. He isn't my father. He's my grandpa too."

Lana's brows furrowed in that cute way when she didn't understand things.

Like zippers. She would play with the zipper of her jacket all the time. It was so amazing. Pull it up, it comes together. Pull it down, it opens again. Amazing.

"Gramps is Daddy's Gramps." Lana nodded. "And my Gramps."

"Right."

Hmmm.

Still, watching him, she asked then, "You gotta daddy?"

Laxus only sat up then, finally before reaching over to pat her coloring book. "Come on, hatchling." He tapped her on the noise gently that time, eliciting one of her big giggles. "Let's color, huh? I want you to color me...uh..." He flipped some pages in the little booklet before stopping on one. "This. Can you color me this picture of the kitty?"

"Ki-cat."

"Yep. Kitty cat." Her white hair got ruffled then. "Kitty cat."

Lana left it alone for a bit. Forgot, maybe even, that she was curious. Until one day, when Laxus came back from training and found her and Mirajane in the kitchen, baking cookies.

Mirajane was talking loudly when he got to the house, something about this lake by their tiny house that her father used to take them to as kids. She was in the middle of telling Lana all about it when, walking as silently from the front of the house as he could, Laxus stuck his head in the kitchen, just to surprise his daughter.

It worked.

Lana, who was sitting up on the counter, watching her mother mix up some batter, about fell off in her excited wiggles and giggles as she reached out for the man immediately.

"Hey, Lana." He rushed to go lift her up, pressing a kiss against her cheek. "What are you doin'? Huh?"

"Daddy!" She had no problem with the fact that he reeked of sweat and the outside world, as well as a bit of blood twinged in there. Only nuzzled right up to him without a single concern. "You come home."

"I came home," he corrected gently. "I-"

"Laxus, you stink," Mirajane chided with a frown. "You're going to make her stink."

"Am I smelly, Lana? Huh?" Laxus gave her another kiss. "Or is Mommy just jealous that Daddy greeted you first?"

Pulling her head back a bit, Lana smiled brightly at him before, suddenly, she made a face. Staring brightly up at him with her blue eyes, she said, "Mommy's daddy likes fishin'."

"Oh, yeah?" He bounced Lana in his arms. "Is that so?"

Nodding as Mirajane glanced over at them with a grin, their daughter asked, "You daddy like fishin'?"

Her eyes widening, Mira got out a quick, "Lana, don't-" but Laxus was speaking just as quickly.

"Your," he told her softly. "Your. Remember? We've gotta learn that word, silly."

"Yoor," she mimicked with a grin. "Yoor daddy."

"Good job." He nuzzled his head against hers. "You're so smart."

A few kisses and snuggles was all Lana needed to be distracted. That day anyways.

But the questions didn't stop. She was very concerned, it seemed, with just where Daddy's daddy had gotten off to. She knew where Mommy's was; she said that he was somewhere up in the sky, watching over her. And though she didn't quite understand what that meant, it at least gave her a sense of where the man was.

But...if she was to believe that yes, as Mommy explained, everyone had a daddy and a mommy, and that what Daddy said was true, that Gramps was _not_ his daddy, then just where was the man? Huh?

It wasn't something that bothered her constantly, of course. As a three year old, things came and went from her mind at a rather rapid pace. It was typically right after Mirajane had plied her head full of things about her own father that it ever came up.

When Lana finally started questioning him about his mother though, the man had had about enough.

He didn't want to get annoyed with his baby. At all. But those just weren't things that the man liked to talk about. In any way. He was grumbling about this late one night to Mirajane as she tried hard to stay interested and not just pass out on him. He hadn't taken a job in a few weeks, but she'd been working her butt off up at the guildhall. She needed her sleep.

Which is why, as if to end things, she finally told him, "I'll stop talking to her then, dragon."

"Huh?" He'd been in the middle of a sentence when she said that and only frowned. "What do you mean?"

"About my parents." Mirajane was lying on her side, facing him, and couldn't stop her eyes from slipping shut them. "About my life. Whatever. It's what's got her so interested in your parents. If I stop talking to her about mine-"

"That's not fair. And it's not what I want. I-"

"It's fine," Mirajane yawned. "Really. I-"

"If you want to tell Lana about...that, then you can. I just… It's a lot for me. And I don't like dwelling in the past."

"Mmmm," Mira hummed. "That part of the past, you mean. Because you definitely like to fill her head with tales of your glory years, don't you, dragon?"

"Well," he grumbled then, "that's different. If I don't tell her about it, then how can she one day pass it along to others when I die?"

"Are you not immortal? Raijin?"

"Shuddup," he grumbled, their dog, who shared the name, lifting his head at the end of the bed where he and the other mutt, Tenjin, were sleeping. "But seriously, demon, I would never ask you to do that. I know that it makes you feel...good, talking about them, to her."

"But it makes you feel bad," she pointed out, "having her asked about yours."

"I can feel bad. For you." Falling onto his back, Laxus stared up at the ceiling as Mirajane, thinking they were finished for the night, shut her eyes and let out a rather content sigh. "I just… I dunno, demon. Maybe I should just tell Lana, you know?"

Hardly awake then, Mira managed to get out, "Tell 'er wha'?"

"That, you know, yes, I have parents. And no, I don't have any cute stories about them. Then she'll just stop asking, don't you think? Since she got her answer? Mirajane? Mira, are you sleeping?"

Of course.

Letting out a short breath, Laxus figured he'd better get some too. His wife was working the afternoon and night shift the following day, meaning that he'd have Lana to contend with all alone.

And when, over lunch, she asked him once more about where his daddy was, Laxus took in a deep breath before replying.

"My daddy," he said as Lana sat next to him on the couch in the living room (they weren't really supposed to eat anything in there and especially not messy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but what Mira didn't know could get him killed...err…), "isn't around anymore. He… He's wasn't a very good daddy."

"No good daddy?"

"He was _not_ a good daddy. Remember? Not?"

"Not," Lana got out, though she might have been trying to say the word no and the peanut butter screwed up her pronunciation. "Not."

That seemed to quell her, however, as Lana went back to eating. Laxus though, just sitting there, didn't feel as if things were quite over yet and began speaking again.

"It wasn't that he was a bad daddy, I guess," he said, staring up thoughtfully as Lana, who was next to him on the couch, looked around for the doggies to feed the rest of her sandwich to, not knowing that Laxus had put them out in the yard to play. "He just… You know, all the things that make me great and awesome and the best dad in the world to you-"

The super duper best.

"-he just didn't do." Laxus glanced down at Lana then. Feeling his eyes, she grinned up at her father, face smeared with the remnants of her lunch. "Like, you know, how I read to you and we play tea party and color and… He was just different. Things were different. I bet Gramps didn't do anything like that with him either."

"Gramps." Lana, bored then with eating and not finding the doggies to feed her food to, took to playing in it, mushing the bread all up in her hands, creating an even bigger mess. "Gramps color."

"Well, yeah, Lana, he does with you. Because you're...the best baby demon and dragon hybrid to ever exist."

Dang right.

"And he did with me too because I'm-"

"You Daddy," she informed him with a grin. "Daddy."

"Yeah, I know, Lana. I just meant… The point is that Ivan wasn't a good daddy. And your daddy, me, would like if we didn't talk so much about him anymore. Is that okay? I just don't think that he's really even that important to my life. Not anymore, anyways."

Lana, completely unfamiliar with most of his words, only dropped the mushy mass of bread she'd created before holding her hands up to her father, showing off just how filthy they had become.

"I finish," she told him to which Laxus could only nod, letting out a soft sigh.

"Of course you are." Getting to his feet, he took her plate from her and sat it with his on the coffee table before lifting his baby into his arms. "Come on. Let's go get washed up."

They spent a lot of the day out in the backyard with the dogs, Laxus letting Lana explore nature in the best way she knew how; by mucking around in it and creating an even bigger mess. Laxus had to question why they bathed the child at all. Waste of water, really.

"You're getting your clothes all dirty, hatchling," he informed her more than once as she dug around with the dogs, searching for worms and bugs. She liked those sorts of things. He was always having to make sure she didn't, like, try and eat them. "You know that?"

Like she cared.

If her big brothers, the dogs, got to do it, then so could she!

Nap time was welcome to Laxus that day. As he, Lana, and the mutts (he only let them come because the kid would cry if they didn't), settled into his big bed, it was with the intention of their goodnight story. Laxus had the best ones of those. Lana knew a lot of them pretty well.

Like, um...the time he beat up that one monster. Or that other monster. And oh, that really big and scary monster. And the time that he saved the entire guild singlehandedly and with no help whatsoever because he was the biggest, baddest slayer to ever walk the face of Earth Land.

Lana liked that story.

Lana liked all the stories!

That afternoon, however, Laxus' mind still kinda felt heavy about Ivan and, the only way he ever knew how to relieve that as a child, was to think instead about his mother.

"You know, hatchling, that all that stuff Mira tells you about her parents is great and I'm sure they were great and… But my mom? She was just like me. Completely awesome."

"Mommy."

"Mmmhmm. My mommy. Your grandma." Laxus was on his back and glanced to his side to see all three of his children, Lana, Raijin, and Tenjin, just lying there, watching him. Well, Lana was watching him and Tenjin was sleeping while Raijin licked some crumbs off the bed from where Laxus had eaten chips for breakfast there while Mira was in the shower (again, what she didn't know…), but he felt like he had their rapt attention. "She was… She died when I was a kid. But before that, she was...a lot like your mommy."

Lana could tell a long story a mile off and only hunkered down under the blankies and went ahead with her sleep routine, which basically consisted of yawning loudly before just conking out.

She had it down pat.

"She took care of me, I mean. Like how Mirajane takes care of me. Real good care of me. And they both like to listen to me talk and know when I'm feeling bad and what to do to make me feel better. Just...in different ways. But my mother was the best, Lana. You don't even know. And...you never will."

Unless, of course, he told her about the woman. The way that Mirajane was making very sure that Lana knew just who her maternal grandparents were. That her grandfather worked hard every day of his life and that there was no one that her grandmother loved more than her family.

Was it not Laxus' duty then to be for certain that she knew just as much about his mother? That Lana understood that she was the best mother she could be, under the circumstances, and tried her hardest to keep the very spiraling Ivan from tainting his mind? It felt like it, at least. Like it was his duty. Because without him passing the stories onto Lana, where would they go? Nowhere.

He felt like his mother should go on forever. And, even if he couldn't accomplish that, at least everywhere with Lana.

It almost felt like, in that moment, an injustice to his daughter _not_ to tell her about all of those things.

When Mirajane got home that night, it was to find jelly stains on the couch (he'd get to them tomorrow), the dogs kicked out of the bedroom (Laxus had finally had enough of his sons; they were nothing but troublemakers) and wrecking havoc on the house by tearing up what appeared to be the trash from the kitchen, Lana in her own bed for once (sometimes Laxus felt like she should be a big girl), and a pile of dishes in the sink (again, tomorrow sounded promising).

The only thing she enjoyed finding was Laxus in the downstairs guest room, pulling some of his old stuff out of the closet in there.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she joined him in the room. The man had heard her yelling at the dogs, then complaining loudly about him, as well as heard her go upstairs to check on Lana, so she didn't surprise him. He didn't even glance back at her.

"Go to bed, baby." He was always concerned about her sleeping habits. "You work morning shift tomorrow, right? I'll be up eventually."

"You haven't gone though your old stuff in a long time," she pointed out, staring at the cardboard boxes the man had already pulled out of the closet. They'd been opened and rummaged through, meaning Mira got to see all the things bachelor Laxus had to put away when he became her husband. This included his collection of important beer cans, his old filthy magazines that he couldn't throw away because, hey, memories, as well as some old clothes and other trinkets from around his apartment. "Are you looking for something?"

"I have these photos of-"

"Oh, gross, Laxus. Seriously?"

"What?" That got him to glance back at her with a frown. "They're of my mother."

Mira blinked. Then she came closer. "And you've...kept them in here?"

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with them?"

"We could have put them up around the house, Laxus!"

"Don't yell at me. It's been a very confusing day for me."

"I'm not yelling." Not then, anyways. Mira watched as he pulled yet another box off the top shelf in the closet. "I just don't know why you'd ever keep these from me."

"I wasn't keeping them from you. I just don't… I don't like thinking about the past. I like now. Right now. With you and Lana and… But..." He dropped the box before turning to look at his wife, face rather solemn. "Lana should know about my mother. She deserves to. And my mother deserves to be remember."

"Dragon, I didn't mean to start all of this by-"

"It's fine." When he found that box had nothing in it that was useful, he went to grab another. "I should have been doing this from the beginning."

Still, Mira only stood there with her arms crossed. "Then I'll stay up and help you find them."

"Mirajane, you need to go to-"

"I want to help my husband find some photos." She pushed passed him to grab a box as well. "So that's what I'm going to do."

And as they searched through all those boxes that night only for Laxus to remember that he had stashed the photographs in the _dresser_ instead of in a box about three hours later, Mira never once complained. Didn't chide him for his forgetfulness or the fact that he even thought it was okay to keep his mother's photos locked up. Didn't mention how she would cherish just one photo of either of her parents.

Only sat down there and helped him. Just like always. And maybe one day, that's a story Lana could tell her kids.

* * *

 **I've been feeling pretty MIA recently, but it's definitely not because I'm not writing, because I am, but rather I can't seem to finish anything. Hence the random one-shot from Last Month. I figured I could at least start and finish a story about Laxus and Lana. And look, I did.**


End file.
